The present invention relates to an improved kind of clothes drying machine, preferably of the type intended for use in households, adapted to perform operating cycles for handling laundry items loaded in the rotating drum thereof by letting a fluid medium, such as in particular a gas or, still more particularly, steam, i.e. water vapour, or again steam carrying minute particles of condensed water mixed therewith, into said drum holding the laundry items.
While reference will be generally made to a jet of steam in the following description when talking of such fluid or medium due to be injected in the laundry holding drum, this shall in all cases be understood as meaning that such medium may be any fluid mixture—prevailingly in the state of a gas—containing any of a number of other substances, such as detergents, scents, disinfectants, and the like.
Largely known is the possibility for garments and clothes in general, but the most delicate ones in particular, to be submitted to special treatments aimed at freshening them up, i.e. removing creases, wrinkles and felting defects therefrom, wherein such treatments do not involve any traditional washing in water—as followed by machine or air drying—or any dry cleaning process or, finally, any smoothing or flattening with the traditional iron.
In other words, these treatments are carried out by directly loading the clothes to be treated into the rotating drum of a household-type clothes drying machine—generally known as tumble dryer in the art—and then letting a stream of gas or steam, preferably water vapour, into the same drum.
More information and details on such treatments, including the purposes thereof and the manners in which they are carried out, can be inferred from the description given in the European patent application no. 04100490.4 filed by this same Applicant, to which reference is therefore made for reasons of brevity.
Furthermore, a number of solutions and improvements suggesting that some fluids, prevailingly gases and/or vapours, should be let into a container holding garments and clothes items in general to the same purpose of freshening them up or submitting such garments or clothes items to a particular improving treatment, and further enabling such treatments to be effectively carried out, are known from the disclosure in the European patent application no. 0623712.0 filed on Nov. 18th, 2006.
Both said patent publications provide a common teaching in that the fluid to be let into the container holding the garments and clothes items to be treated, should be first delivered to a specially provided nozzle opening into the interior of such container, i.e. the dryer drum in the particular case being considered. From such nozzle the fluid is then ejected naturally, owing to the pressure at which it is submitted and supplied thereto, to eventually spread out inside the drum and, as a result, upon and through said garments and clothes items to be treated.
However, these particular manners of carrying out the above-described treatment processes, while inherently simple and effective, have turned out as being peculiar in showing up some practical drawbacks. In other words, they share a peculiarity in that, when said fluid is a gas or vapour mixture that also contains some droplets of a liquid substance, or when the gas/vapour is generated for instance in a rather remotely located boiler and, while flowing through the supply conduit leading it to the drum for injection thereinto, cools down and undergoes partial condensation when reaching the above-mentioned nozzle, it unfailingly occurs that such liquid particles enter the drum as such.
In other words, it quite frequently occurs that issuing from said nozzle there are not only the desired flow of gas/vapour, but also some liquid droplets that are therefore projected into the drum and onto the garments.
The practical drawbacks arising therefrom are of various kinds, i.e.:
1) a first such drawback may for instance arise from the fact that, when the treatment is being carried out on a load of delicate and coloured clothes and garments, which are generally known to have to be handled at temperatures ranging from 40° C. to 60° C. max. when washed and dried, the rather high temperature of approx. 90° C., at which the liquid particles mixed in the vapour steam are ejected from the nozzle, quite often causes the colours of coloured fabrics to suffer alterations, i.e. to discolour in a spot-like, patchy manner; much more apparent and clearly perceived can this problem be, actually, when considering that it quite frequently occurs that the liquid particles being ejected do not involve just some small and sparse droplets, but tend on the contrary to form a real jet of almost entirely liquid medium being sprayed almost continuously and sometimes even abundantly, i.e. in great supply, wherein such circumstance can be most readily be appreciated to be instrumental to aggravating the above-mentioned problem of the spot-like, patchy discoloration of the fabrics;
2) a second drawback is due to the fact that, owing to such treatment being generally carried out following a drying cycle, or being otherwise an isolated process that is carried out independently and, therefore, is not followed by any other treatment, it may well occur that the liquid particles reaching the garments being handled tend to settle thereonto and, while eventually drying up, they nevertheless leave a clearly visible halo-like mark that tend to persist there even after the garments are removed from the drum; the ultimate result is that the treated clothes may eventually take up an appearance that looks even worse than the one they had before being treated for freshening up, wherein quite markedly perceivable are in particular the small spots caused by the aforementioned liquid droplets;
3) a third drawback is in connection with the actual safety of the user of the drying machine: the liquid droplets issuing from the ejection nozzle according to the prior art may in fact keep dripping from said nozzle for a short period of time even after the end of the treatment process, i.e. when the loading door of the machine can be opened so as to enable the user to introduce his/her hands into the drum in view of removing the treated clothes therefrom; in such circumstance, it quite frequently occurs that said droplets fall to hit the hand of the user as it reaches out under the nozzle, and—owing to such droplets being at a temperature of approx. 90° C.—they certainly expose the user to dangerous scalding problems.